HD Voice Coming to AT&T in 2014

AT&T's CEO said better voice quality will come this year, but it could be a ways away.

LAS VEGASImproved call quality via "HD Voice" will finally come to AT&T this year, AT&T wireless CEO Ralph de la Vega said at a developers' conference in advance of CES today. De la Vega didn't give any details other than that the Asus Padfone X (left) will be the first device to support the new system.

In the past, AT&T has said that its approach to HD Voice, unlike T-Mobile's, is tied to VoLTE (voice over LTE), which essentially turns voice calls into Internet data on the new 4G LTE network. The Padfone X supports VoLTE, but older HD Voice phones, including the Apple iPhone 5s
and Samsung Galaxy S4, don't support it so far.

The most common way wireless carriers improve voice quality is by switching to a higher-quality voice compressor, known as a codec. T-Mobile and many European carriers use the AMR-WB (wideband) codec, which can represent a wider range of sound than the older AMR Half Rate codec AT&T uses. According to Wikipedia, AMR-WB represents 507000 Hz as opposed to 3003400 Hz on older codecs. Sprint uses a different codec for its HD Voice, but it's a similar idea.

HD Voice isn't interoperable so far, though. T-Mobile's HD Voice only works when calling other T-Mobile HD Voice phones; ditto for Sprint. Neither system works to provide high-quality calls to U.S. landlines. It's unclear whether AT&T's VoLTE-based HD Voice will be able to work with T-Mobile's; they'll probably use the same voice codec, but they're on completely different types of networks.

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 9 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, one of the hosts of the daily PCMag Live Web show and speaks frequently in mass media on cell-phone-related issues. His commentary has appeared on ABC, the BBC, the CBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, and in newspapers from San Antonio, Texas to Edmonton, Alberta.
Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer, having contributed...
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